


Wherever you go, I will go

by misereremolly



Series: Wherever you go, I will go [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Paul is a scientist not a soldier, Paul is inappropriate when loopy, Protective Hugh, Protective Paul, Tilly is a romantic at heart, Unhappy scientist has work co-opted for war, fainting Paul, space boos do science together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-18 21:21:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13108764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misereremolly/pseuds/misereremolly
Summary: Paul is reassigned to the Discovery at the start of the war. Hugh chooses to go with him. Paul is not thrilled.Just a short, angsty take on how this conversation might have gone. I assume here that Lorca's reputation precedes him.*Update: Added a second chapter. Paul and Hugh do a test run of the cybernetic augment. Hugh tries to be serious, but Paul is cute when he's loopy, or being inappropriate, or fainting like a character in a romance novel, or turned on by doing science together.*Update 2: Sorry, I can't seem to be able to leave this one alone! Turned into a series, added another section.It’s heartbreaking that Paul would choose to lie to Hugh about his worsening condition, just shortly after he’s extolling honesty as the foundation of relationships. So, what’s behind that choice? Fear of what’s happening to him? A reluctance to give up his ability to travel the mycelial network? Or perhaps it stems from a misguided attempt to ensure that Hugh survives the war, which is what this series explores –- giving a bit of a personal dimension to Paul’s motivations for choosing to put himself at such risk in the battle with the Ship of the Dead.





	1. Chapter 1

Hugh’s waiting for him when he comes in the door.

Paul doesn’t know where to begin. How to explain this horrible, churning agony he feels over their lives being turned upside down. This betrayal of his belief in Starfleet’s ideals. That –- and worst of all –- he’s being sent away from Hugh, and he can’t ask him to come with him. Not this time.

“What is it?”

And with that one gentle question, all his righteous fury, all his fear, all of everything he’s feeling collapses inward and crushes the words on his tongue. Suddenly, explaining it all seems like the most impossible thing in the universe. 

So he grabs a Padd off the kitchen table, pulls up his reassignment orders, and wordlessly hands it over.

Hugh looks it over. “The _Discovery_.”

It’s hopeful, the way he says it, and it’s almost too much for Paul to bear. He folds his arms tightly around himself.

“They’re breaking up the lab. Straal’s been assigned to the _Glenn_ ,” he explains tonelessly. He can’t even muster the bitterness back into his voice. “Twice the number of labs, twice the speed of the results, right?” 

He meanders into the living room, sitting on the edge of the couch, every muscle in his body aching with tension. 

Hugh follows, still reading. “Paul,” he exclaims, stunned. “It says here they’re moving up the launch of your designs.” 

“Which would be a wonderful thing, under any other circumstances…” Paul trails off, staring at the floor. 

Hugh breaks the silence. “I’ve been reassigned too.”

Paul’s head jerks up, surprised. “Where?”

“The _Buenaventura._ They want me as their CMO.”

The _Buenaventura._ A flagship. They would probably spend the duration of the war shuttling diplomats and making unsubtle courtesy calls to potential allies. 

Which meant Hugh would be safe. Relatively safe, anyway. As safe as one could be in an intergalactic war, more so than where he was going, anyhow, which was the most important thing. 

With newfound determination, Paul surges to his feet.

“Hugh,” he says, taking the Padd from Hugh’s hand and tossing it aside. “It’s a CMO position. It’s what you’ve always wanted, what you’ve worked so hard for.”

Hugh just gives him a long look, and he belatedly realizes that congratulating him first probably would have been a subtler opening gambit. 

“Who’s the new captain on the _Discovery_?”

Paul shakes his head against the conversational whiplash. “…What?”

“The captain of the _Discovery_ ,” Hugh demands. “Who is it?”

Leave it to his dear doctor to go right to the heart of the matter. “Gabriel Lorca,” Paul mutters unwillingly. 

Any hope he’d harbored that maybe Hugh had somehow missed the news of the fate of the _Buran_ and her crew is dashed when the expression on Hugh’s face hardens. 

Paul knows that look very well. It’s the one Hugh gets when he’s about to say something totally reasonable and completely logical that Paul really, really doesn’t want to hear.

“Hugh…”

“There will be other CMO jobs after this is all over.”

“Provided we’re both still alive after this is all over.” 

Hugh tactfully ignores him. “I’ve already messaged the CMO of the _Discovery_. She said they’d be glad to have me.”

“No,” Paul explodes. It’s too much, it’s all happening too fast. Everything is changing, nothing is right, and why can’t Hugh just do the safe thing? “ _No_. I won’t let you.”

“You don’t get to ‘let me’ do anything, Paul. This is my choice. And if we have to be at war, and if you have to be on the ship that’s going to have a target painted clear across its bow, then I’m not going to bide my time on some ambassadorial cruise half a galaxy away from you.”

Paul feels exhausted again. He sinks down onto the couch but remains stubbornly silent, unwilling to concede.

Hugh sits beside him, settling a hand on his shoulder. It’s strong and gentle and comforting and almost more than he can stand. “Paul. Truly. What do you want?”

For this to be over. For it to have never happened. 

But those things aren’t possible. 

All that’s left, then, is honesty. 

“I want to be with you, dear doctor,” Paul whispers. “So, so much.” 

And Hugh responds to him, as always, with the kindest honesty in return. “You can’t, love. But I can be with you.”

All Paul can do is shake his head over and over again until it falls like a dead weight onto Hugh’s shoulder.

He’s not sure how long they sit there, holding onto each other, processing this terrible thing even as they try, if only for a little while, to hide from it in each other’s arms.

It’s some time before a thought occurs to Paul. 

“How did you know to contact _Discovery's_ CMO?”

Hugh smiled weakly. “Straal messaged me. He said you stormed out. He was worried.”

“That hardly seems fair,” Paul accuses. “You were ready for me.” He pauses for a pang of grief. “I’m going to miss him.”

They’re quiet again for a while, but it is reconciling into something less tense. They settle back into the soft cushions of the couch and rearrange themselves into their habitual, comfortable pretzel of limbs. 

Hugh speaks up. “I’ll be so proud to fly through the galaxy on a ship of your design.”

When Paul looks up, he sees such trust and determination in those beloved dark eyes and it warms him as deeply as it frightens him, and he presses his forehead to Hugh’s to hide his reaction. 

He hates this –- to have Hugh following him, becoming a wartime doctor on the front lines. They were partners in life, in science, in exploration -- him to the edges of physics and biology, Hugh to the possibilities of living beings; what would it do to them, to become explorers of death? 

“I’ll make it safe for you,” Paul vows. “Whatever it takes. I promise.”


	2. Wherever you stay, I will stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul and Hugh do a test run of the cybernetic augment. Hugh tries to be serious, but Paul is cute when he's loopy, or being inappropriate, or fainting like a character in a romance novel, or turned on by doing science together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place between “Lethe” and “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad.”

Paul was waiting for him when he walked in the door. 

Hugh followed him to a clear workspace alongside _Discovery’s_ spore chamber, and he started to set up the equipment he’d brought with him: medical scanners, medkit, and spare parts for the cybernetic augment he’d designed for Paul. 

All the things he needed for their first test run.

It was late at night, and technically they were both off-duty. But they were here, spending their downtime in _Discovery’s_ astromycology lab, because Lorca hadn’t approved their requests to redirect time in their regular schedules toward working on Hugh’s design and completing their adaptations to the spore drive technology.

Hugh had to admit that he hadn’t taken the news very well; it was inconceivable to him that it somehow wasn’t a priority to make it so that Paul didn’t have to get stabbed in the sides every time they jumped.

Oddly enough it was Paul that took it in a stride –- something about that jump-induced loopiness which granted Paul a startling new patience with his nemesis-the-Captain -- and he’d just booked some time for an additional test jump into the ship’s master schedule. 

Hugh wasn’t unhappy to be working on a project alongside Paul. In fact, he’d always hoped that one day they would be able to put their shared love of biology into practice together. 

But was it too much to ask for it to be under better circumstances?

As if sensing his thoughts, Paul offered up his arms with a sweet little smile. His love had been almost giddy with excitement since Hugh presented him with his design for the augment. His body practically vibrated with glee whenever they found time to work on it together. 

More than once they’d taken their work back to their quarters. Not because they were taking up space and resources for on-duty personnel, but because there was something about the combination of intellectual stimulation and Hugh’s attentive, purposeful touches that would sometimes send Paul into a mood that was way more _physically affectionate_ than Hugh was entirely comfortable with in public. 

Which had made for some _interesting_ brainstorming sessions. Turns out that Paul was shockingly good at inductive reasoning when he was getting fucked up against a wall.

Hugh soothingly stroked his thumb up Paul’s bare forearm, his disgruntlement dispelling, and he took a moment to inspect the augments. 

They were both wearing their _Disco_ shirts; Paul disparagingly referred to said shirt as “standard-issue morale-enforcing swag” and only wore it when he had nothing else clean, but Hugh couldn’t help but take a little pleasure in the sight they must make, the two of them matching, side-by-side and shoulder-to-shoulder.

The rest of the lab kept a respectful distance, diligent in their assigned tasks. A couple of off-duty technicians were there for the test, Tilly included, and Hugh noted their presence with appreciation. Somehow, despite his attitude, Paul had managed to elicit some pretty strong loyalty among his team. 

They finished their preparations quickly, their movements smooth, their words few, and within minutes Paul was standing in the spore chamber. The machinery directed retrofitted needles into his arms as Hugh stood at his side, closely monitoring the process.

It was all he could do to resist the urge to guide the needles himself, to proffer the comfort of human touch instead of the coldness of automation. But no; this needed to be something that could happen at a moment’s notice, completed within minutes, and without him there to assist. 

Or to protect. 

Shaking his head against the thought, Hugh checked over the connections one more time and exited the chamber, going to stand by Tilly at the main control panel. 

He made the call to the bridge. 

Paul smiled at him again. And they jumped.

It was so odd; he never felt a thing when they made jumps. No one did. It was as smooth as warping from one place to the next, but he knew that what Paul felt was absolutely different. His love had tried so many times to explain the experience to him, but it was one of those things that was, apparently, beyond words. 

Tilly gave Hugh the all clear, and he was back in the spore chamber at Paul’s side, supervising the retraction of the mechanism. 

“How did that feel?” he asked, scanner out, circling around to Paul’s back. 

A quiet pause, and Paul made a soft little sound in his throat. Hugh glanced up in time to see a blur of blond hair and pale skin, falling. 

Instinctively he let his scanner clatter to the floor, and in the next instant his arms were full with a fainting Paul.

With a bit of careful effort, Hugh eased them down to the deck, Paul draped across his lap, head cradled in the crook of one arm as he reached for his scanner with his other hand. Hugh kept his focus on Paul’s face, and thankfully within moments his love was stirring, a deep breath filling his lungs, warm body shifting in his arms. 

Dizzy blue eyes fluttered open and locked onto Hugh’s gaze, and Paul granted him such a stunningly beautiful gift of a smile, his face wholly radiant, looking up at him with open, transparent adoration. 

In the span of a heartbeat Hugh was completely disarmed, his professional persona utterly defeated. It felt absurdly like he’d been unceremoniously dropped into the lead role of a fairy tale play with no time to learn the lines.

Hugh caught a motion out of the corner of his eye that made him uncomfortably aware of the intimacy of the moment. Sure enough, when he looked up the lab was gathered around and peering through the glass of the chamber, worried faces transmuting variously into relief, or to that look people get when they see a cute pile of puppies. 

Tilly in particular looked like she was about to melt into a puddle.

Paul would hate that. Hugh wasn’t particularly thrilled about it either.

“We’re okay,” he announced in his best, authoritatively dismissive _it’s under control, now back the fuck off_ tone of voice. 

Luckily they don’t need to be told twice.

Paul takes a breath, and Hugh whips his head back around. 

“…what…?”

“You fainted.”

Paul scoffs. “I did no such thing,” he says good-naturedly as he abruptly _sits up._

Hugh barely has time to stammer a protest before his poor foolish love is dropping right back down into his arms. 

Whirling blue eyes blink open again sheepishly. Hugh just waits a beat for the point to be made. 

Then he lays Paul down flat on the deck. “Okay. So now we do this my way,” he says evenly, shifting so Paul’s legs are resting on his lap, elevated. 

A quick scan reveals that there’s nothing terribly amiss. “We’ll just have to make some adjustments so your blood pressure doesn’t drop like that again. But I also want to get a lean chair in here for you, just in case.”

“Thank you, dear doctor,” Paul murmured softly. 

“For what?”

“For looking out for me,” and he looked a little discomfited. 

Hugh sighed. Neither one of them had forgotten the vow Paul had made –- to keep the ship safe for Hugh. It haunted him, and he knew that it haunted Paul. After they moved into their rooms on Discovery, it took several weeks for Paul to finally stop asking him every single day whether he wouldn’t rather take that CMO job on the diplomat’s ship. 

Hugh never regretted his decision, not once. And now more than ever he knew his place was here. 

“Paul, I still don’t feel right about this.”

“About what?”

“We can make this whole process more humane,” Hugh explained, gesturing around the chamber. “Turn this barbaric use of your body into something more sanitized, with a sort of medical veneer to it. But whether these needles are causing penetration wounds in your sides, or penetrating your augment, it’s still -- Paul, did you just giggle at me?”

No one had any right looking that adorably devilish. “I just like hearing you talk about penetrating me, dear doctor.”

“ _Paul!_ ” Hugh hissed, scandalized. His skin prickled with an embarrassed flush, but he was unable to completely banish a smirk from his lips.

Of course Paul noticed. He pulled a ridiculously fake innocent face. “I’m listening. Please. Do go on.”

And that was that. They dissolved into laughter together. He tried so hard to keep it quiet that his sides were aching by the time they calmed down.

“Look, Paul, I’m serious,” Hugh continued as he helped Paul sit up. “We’re still powering _Discovery_ with a living being. A human subject. It wasn’t right for the Tardigrade, and, ability to consent aside, I’m not sure that it’s right for you.”

Paul looked at him, eyes bright but lucid. “I’m fine, dear doctor. Really. And this isn’t permanent. We are still working on other, software-based, means of navigation. The breakthroughs are coming twice as fast now that I’ve experienced this firsthand. We’ll get there. And until then,” he lifted an arm proudly, “this will make it all so much better.”

They got to their feet. Hugh’s hands hovered solicitously, but Paul needed no steadying. Settling into their workstation, they started reviewing data, their heads together, their arms moving in tandem, comfortably crossing over each other to pull up new screens, to reach for equipment. 

Hugh trusted Paul, but he was still uneasy, and would stay so as long as this lasted. He worried about how far Paul would go to make his invention work, what price Paul was willing to pay to make this ship safe.

And he worried whether his otherwise brilliant love would ever figure out that Hugh would never truly feel safe unless Paul could keep himself safe too.

**Author's Note:**

> Title drawn from Ruth 1:16-17: "But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to abandon you, to turn back from following after you. Wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do this to me and more so if even death separates me from you.”


End file.
